10,000 Lakes

March 13th, 2010. My little Jetta was packed to the brim with clothes, toiletries, food and drink, blankets and pillows for the next three months. And, oh yeah, not to mention me, A and our tiny little two month old. We were due directly north for 422.6 miles or about a 7 hour drive. I'm pretty sure we looked more like a clown car than a compact family car :). With just a few stops made for potty breaks, gas and blown out diapers. I mean, talk about efficient...I was even pumping on the road so that we could just give M that fresh pumped bottle so we wouldn't have to stop for every feeding. I honestly have to wonder what other drivers had to think when they passed us!

Madden and Mama were twins!

It was early evening when we arrived at our temporary fully furnished apartment. We unloaded the car, arranged our stuff and got settled into what we thought was just for a few short months...little did we know what was to come!

Life in Minnesota was interesting. We honestly didn't know a single soul. A was working 10-12 hour days because it was busy season and so it was really just me and our 2 month old son left to spend a lot of alone time together. Lucky for me, we lived just 2 minutes from a mall so that was the first friend I made ;) M and I made that our daily routine: Up for the day, load up the car, head to the mall and become one of what people call a "mall walker" Your average mall walker is about 70 some years old and retired. And yet, here I was, 25 years old, pushing a stroller and speed walking for exercise! M got in an hour nap and I got out of the house. It was a win-win!

We really started to settle into the MN lifestyle pretty quickly. Only because I knew that this was temporary. Anytime A would ask me how my day was I would respond with "it was ok. I just couldn't live here forever..." just hoping that by me saying that, it would be true, when deep down inside, I had this gut feeling that it was going to be a little more permanent.

Madden loved swim time!

We continued this routine for about a month, when A came home from work one day with some fantastic news. "How do you feel about calling Minnesota home?" My heart sunk. Tears stung my eyes and my throat seemed to swell shut. "What??" My world stopped for that brief moment. I honestly thought it was the end of the world. But when we sat down and discussed our plans for our new life there, it didn't seem quite so bad. We found a church, became members of a gym (with a daycare for M for when I worked out ;) and I became part of a MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) group and a bible study. Life was really starting to fall into place. We found a townhome in a nice neighborhood, which we moved to within 2 weeks of finding out we were moving there, making that M's third home in his three short months of life!

We had many days at the park...MN summers are absolutely beautiful!

Life was becoming pretty comfortable. I could see us growing our family there. M had so many of his firsts there...first crawling, first baby food, first word.

We had a blast that summer, playing in the pool, going for bike rides and stroller rides. Minnesota summers are really beautiful.

Then, the week after labor day, it all changed. With the end of summer, came the end of our stay in Minnesota.  A had decided to take a new position with the company we left behind in the first place because he saw the "bigger picture" there.  He felt he had more of a future there.  And I couldn't have agreed more.  We moved back to Omaha two weeks later and haven't looked back since!

No matter where we were, we were die hard Husker fans!

Therein lies the history of what led us back to Nebraska.  Even though we had a lot of ups and downs that first year of M's life, it brought us back to the one and only true place that has ever felt like home: Nebraska.